DOCUMENT IMAGE DATA BASE RETRIEVING METHOD, METHOD AND DEVICE FOR PROGRAMMING DOCUMENT IMAGE DATA BASE AND STORAGE MEDIUM

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an interactive document image data base programming/ retrieving system with which a document image can be retrieved through an intuitive method easy to comprehend. SOLUTION: A user inputs a keyword (102), and a system retrieves a document image containing that keyword (104). The system classifies these document images into a plurality of clusters based on visual features (108) and automatically selects the representative document image of each cluster (110), and that image is displayed for the user. When further continuing retrieval, the user selects one of these representative document images (114). The system classifies the document images in the cluster corresponding to the selected representative document image again (108), selects the representative document image of each cluster and displays it for the user (110 and 112).